Very insightful insight to the profession. I asked my mom who was a hospice nurse if it was accurate or overblown but she said it was accurate.

In short, Hospitals need to staff their units properly to reduce medical errors, burnout, and many other adverse consequences. It was interesting to read about the part where she mentioned how nursing can in some places be taught as customer service and the downsides to the business side of hospitals is that they can sometimes care more about the patient ratings rather than giving quality patient care. Sometimes what the patient wants isn’t the best thing for them and it mentioned how one hospital that had the highest ratings had high mortality rates.

The other interesting thing I read was how with DNR’s(do not resuscitate orders) sometimes it would be better instead of putting them through so many medications and treatments especially if they do require CPR their ribs are going to be broken. She mentioned how the staff would run slow codes as a loophole to show the family they tried but they would just go through the motions but walk slowly or call it sooner instead of going for longer.

It also sucked to hear how even if there are mistakes in medication orders the nurses are the ones to get fired since they didn’t spot the error not the people that made the error and ordered it.

Nurses are there at the bedside for more time than the physicians and can be more intimately involved with their care. “I get you undressed,on the monitor, cleaned up if needed. I will wash the blood and vomit out of your hair, and not gag or make you feel embarrassed that you are having nausea, pain, or a neuro status change because suddenly you think it’s 1988. That will be the reason that you get a head CT, and we find a brain bleed and contact the neuro-surgeon. And then I will be at your bedside for the next three hours while we wait, reassuring your mother. You will hardly ever see the doctor. You will always see the nurse.” I think it’s important to not bash doctors because they have struggles on their own but still to give nurses the respect for all they do.

Also don’t get sick in July. At the start of July, medical students become interns, interns become first-year residents, and each successive class of residents moves up a level. Some of these stats might be slightly outdated but “in July, u.s, death rates in these hospitals surge 8 to 34 percent”. “Fatal medication errors spike 10 percent in July and in no other month”. Experienced nurses during these periods are the ones guiding the inexperienced physicians and catching errors.

In general another takeaway was to treat people nicer in general. Many nurses leave the profession because of bullying. “Nurse bullying is responsible for 60 percent of new nurses leaving their first job within six months and 20 percent leaving the profession entirely within three years”. If they are not getting physically/sexually assaulted or verbally harassed they are probably just overly stressed from being understaffed and overworked and if they are late to answer a call light or forget something, treat them with respect because they might have 4-5 other patients they are treating depending on the setting/staffing ratio.